Regeneration of Native Grasses

At Glenwood Merinos, we are very passionate about improving the land for future generations. Glenwood is not just a profit centre and we aim to achieve a balanced outcome for the landscape, livestock, business and the people. This has led to productivity gains and a clear path for a ‘sustainable’ future in all senses of the word.

We first looked into holistic farm management in 1998 and felt that not only did it fit well with our resource base and its predominately native pastures and superphosphate and sub clover history, but it also fit in well with our own values and our desire to lessen inputs while maintaining outputs.

In changing to a holistic approach, we subdivided some paddocks and added watering points. At present, the 4000 wethers graze in one mob over 30, 130-150 hectare paddocks. The aim is to average 40 - 50 hectare paddocks for the wethers. The stud ewes and lambs graze in two separate cells, divided into 25 and 30 paddocks with 30 hectare and 10 hectare average size paddocks.

The results have been impressive with greater diversity of desirable perennials using time controlled grazing, enabling short graze periods and long rest periods. We monitor Glenwood’s progress bi-annually and annually using indicators such as the level of ground cover and type of ground cover, perenniality, evidence of organisms and type of perennials.

It is our view that the global customer is evolving at an increasing rate and issues like ethical and sustainable production will be pressures that we have to live with and adapt to. We ceased mulesing in 2005 and have had access to markets and customers we wouldn’t have had otherwise by staying in the auction system.

We are also creating a point of difference based on processing performance, telling our story and showing our sustainable approach to production and by giving the customer the clean, green fibre they are increasingly looking for.

For more information on Glenwood Merinos go to our website 

Until next time